In June 1968, while many communities in the Pacific Northwest were preparing to celebrate their centennials, Richland, a small city in southeastern Washington, commemorated its tenth anniversary as an incorporated city and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the community's modern beginning, the designation of Hanford, Washington, as the site of plutonium production for the Manhattan Project. Amid the reminiscences and self-congratulations of the 1968 festivities, one highlight was Glenn Seaborg's banquet address on Friday, June 7.

Seaborg was truly one of the high priests of the nuclear era. While still in his twenties, he had been a co-discoverer of plutonium. In early 1942, he launched an extensive research program to isolate the element in quantities sufficient for bomb production. His success paved the way for Hanford's mission in the Manhattan Project, manufacturing enough plutonium for the “Trinity” bomb exploded above New Mexico and the “Little Boy” weapon dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

When Seaborg visited Richland and the Hanford site in 1968, he was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. His address to the dignitaries that evening presented his vision of a peaceful nuclear America. Hanford had just been chosen to house the Fast Flux Test Facility, a breeder reactor development project. For Seaborg, this was only the start. In the future, a complex of very large breeder reactors could generate vast quantities of cheap electricity and industrial process heat.